Tuesday: Flor de Milonga (Aires Tangueros, Rivadavia 1392)

This was a new milonga for me. La Flaca Lucia and her partner, Gerry (an Irish guy) run this milonga.They are very friendly, comfortable folks. It was nice to be greeted with, "I saw you dance last night at La Nacional. You are good!"

The dance space is quite small, with barely room for the row of tables for "singles" on one side, but more room on the other side. Most people ordered food, and looked like they enjoyed it, so this would be a good place to eat and dance. I had already eaten, so I can't give a food review/prices.

This was the first day this milonga started at 7 PM, rather than at 10 PM. I decided to go early because it was free until 8 PM: probably a mistake. It was almost completely tourists (Lucia's students) for a while. Most of them were good enough dancers to be enjoyable. Only one was "Boy Scout" duty, but we should all do our community duty, right? Paybacks for all those milongueros who have danced with me in the past.

Things picked up when no one wanted to dance milonga, and the Italian woman next to me started bouncing around to the milonga. I invited her to dance, and she assumed she had to lead! We switched lead and follow, and had a BLAST! I hate to say it, but she was the best leader I've danced with who was a foreigner, and she was better than a lot of the Argentine men, as well. We did a vals set later. The nice thing was that this milonga is very relaxed, and the guys still danced with us. Later, I was told that one of the gay-friendly milongas happens at this place, so the regular milonga rules are relaxed here in terms of gender.

The evening continued to improve. I danced with one Argentine guy who was turned out to be a stage dancer: nice and dynamic, with fancier moves, but still paying attention to navigation and safety. When his friend showed up, he watched me and then pounced for the next tanda. Both of them danced well, and I did two tandas with each of them. It was the first time this trip that I could use all the turn technique and adorno technique I've been working on with Oscar and Georgina.

I had just changed my shoes to go home when they did the chacarera set, but I danced anyway.

Wednesday: La Milonguita (Sala Siranoush, Armenia 1353)

Sala Siranoush is part of a large structure with several buildings, which you reach by a gate at the street. You pay for the milonga right at the entrance (35 pesos), and there is a security guard as well.

The dance hall is beautiful, large, and air-conditioned. The room was not very full when I arrived at about 7:45, but by 8:30, it was pretty full. When I left around 11 PM, it was just starting to thin out a bit. On the whole, there was a good feeling in the room, with tables of men and tables of women alternating around the dance floor. It was pretty much impossible for me to even see the folks at the other end, but I dance all but two tandas; one of them was a choice not to dance because the music was a bit strange.

Although I have danced many times at La Viruta across the street, this was a new venue for me: two new places in two nights! This was the first time I went dancing where I had to take a taxi home. It cost 40 pesos, but it was worth it!

I had the best tanda of my visit so far. I think he said his name was Horacio. Two of the three women at my table went home, and the other woman said, "Quick! That guy across the room is looking at you! He is REALLY good!" And he was. Wow! There was feeling in every step. There was no "get used to each other" part of the first dance: it just worked immediately. We were in the zone. After the first dance ended, we just grinned stupidly at each other for a moment before starting to talk. Lovely, lovely, lovely!